Violent racist teabaggers?

That’s been the predominant shorthand for how the left feels about the tea-party movement: two lies and a pejorative. In reality, the tea party is neither violent nor racist (for evidence of its lack of racist tendencies, check out the ethnic background of tea-party heroes Herman Cain and Allen West). “Teabaggers” refers to a seriously deviant sexual practice most tea-party members, we suspect, have never tried and wouldn’t even know how to perform without the aid of a manual.

But let’s probe the “violent” part. Tea-party rallies tend to be energetic but well-ordered, and participants have acquired a reputation, grudgingly acknowledged even on the political left, for tidying up their venues (or “redding up,” as we used to say in Pittsburgh, I know not why).

If anyone can provide a confirmed, bona fide example of tea-party types making threats of violence or suggesting they’d relish some bloodletting, let me know. And never mind the Jefferson quote about the blood of patriots. That isn’t a tea-party staple, as far as I know.

On the other hand …
Wednesday night, I was driving on Interstate 84 between Southington and Waterbury, listening to the University of Hartford radio station (WWUH-FM 91.3). What can I say? The radio in my car doesn’t work very well. The station, which often plays very good music but is hard to pick up east of Waterbury, was airing a tape of an interview between a far-left college professor and an interviewer, presumably a student, who was lobbing softball questions.

Before the interview had gone very long, the professor was calling the tea party the Ku Klux Klan without the robes. (Wonder what Imperial Wizard Herman Cain has to say about that.) He also predicted another civil war; apparently, the first one wasn’t violent or bloody enough for his taste.

Why would anyone predict such a thing? Shouldn’t we all be trying to find a way back to each other? I would argue that the vast divide the professor imagines, one that only can be bridged by means of bullets and bombs, is mainly an invention of the 24-hour news cycle. I consider myself a conservative, but I know lots of liberals, and I don’t think any of us wants to harm one another. I also know some rich people, but I don’t imagine for a moment that I’m entitled to any of what they have.

When you see a liberal and a conservative screaming and yelling at each other on “The O’Reilly Factor,” it’s not a principled argument on the issues; it’s performance art. Well, maybe 90 percent of it.

But civil war? I can see it — if the Occupiers and other leftists get what they want and destroy the institutions in their sights. But only if they’re successful in this. And the creep show all of us have been witnessing in New York, Hartford, Sacramento and elsewhere does not look like something the mainstream will embrace.

Speaking of violence, did y0u catch Rosie O’Donnell’s rant the other day? Here’s a synopsis along with some other goodies from the ideological divide.

“I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty,” said (O’Donnell), who did not appear to be joking. “I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million.

Joining her comrades in the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in Manhattan, the celebrity prattled on, pressing for a modern made-in-America version of Mao’s and Pol Pot’s re-education camps: “And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the re-education camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded.”

The guillotine. Think about that. The French Revolution. The Reign of Terror. The revolt that gave France anarchy, followed by dictatorship and endless war under Napoleon Bonaparte. Maybe what’s needed in the Occupied zones is a book drop … I’m thinking Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” might be good for starters.

I would very much like to see the mainstream left denounce, utterly, the violent imagery and apparent yearnings for blood being peddled by those on the far left. Or at least acknowledgment that there is something very diseased on that side of the ideological divide, something that does not appear to be present on the much-reviled far right.